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Dumb Ideas

History Channel Documentary on Human Ancestry: History or Fiction?
August 9, 2005
The History Channel aired a program called “Ape to Man” Monday evening August 7, alleging that modern science had finally pieced together the solution to the puzzle of human evolution.  Although it included debunking episodes of Piltdown (11/18/2003) and Java Man (02/27/2003), the flavor of the show was that the picture of human origins has […]
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Mammals

Sharks and Beavers Inspire Humans
July 16, 2005
Animals never cease to amaze us with their clever solutions to problems that plague human technology.  EurekAlert told of work being done by the Society for Experimental Biology to emulate shark skin as a self-cleaning surface for boats; National Geographic News has pictures of the new product, and a comparison with shark skin.  The navy […]
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Education

Battlefront Dispatches
June 22, 2005
Activities in the Darwin-vs-Design controversy continue generating national news: War of the museums:  The Sternberg Museum in Kansas is trying to reinforce arguments for evolution, according to Voice of America news.  Proud of his T. rex display, curator Greg Liggett claims that “if the school curriculum changes to include theories such as Intelligent Design, critical […]
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Intelligent Design

Smithsonian Reversal Over ID Noticed by Big Science
June 9, 2005
Both Nature1 and Science2 noticed the Smithsonian’s flip-flop over co-sponsoring The Privileged Planet at their Natural History Museum this month (see 06/01/2005 entry).  Both noted the quandary that the Smithsonian found itself in.  They could not back out because of a contract, but under pressure from evolutionists, did not want to appear to endorse intelligent […]
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Intelligent Design

ID Film To Be Aired at Smithsonian
June 1, 2005
The intelligent-design film The Privileged Planet will be shown at the Smithsonian on June 23.  See story on The Ames Tribune.  Pam Sheppard at AIG has a report also.  Following the showing at the National Museum of Natural History, the film will air on PBS stations around the country. Update 06/02/2005: The Smithsonian appears to […]
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Media

SETI Researcher Joins NG Imagination Fest
May 31, 2005
Space.Com writer Tariq Malik reviewed the National Geographic TV series Extraterrestrial that envisions flying whales, giraffe-like predators and flesh-eating tadpoles on a mythical world undergoing its own evolution.  “Using computer models and armed with basic evolutionary theory, the scientists imagined not only what conditions might exist on their theoretical planets,” writes Malik, “but also how […]
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Dinosaurs

Toothy Dinosaur Goes Vegan
May 4, 2005
The news media all pounced on a dinosaur fossil discovery reported in Nature this week.1  Dinosaur finds are ever popular, and reporters especially like it when an artist’s rendition is available.  Some outlets reporting the discovery of Falcarius utahensis, a previously unknown species “in the process of converting to vegetarianism from a rather more bloodthirsty […]
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Education

ID in the News
March 30, 2005
PBS aired a segment on the anti-Darwinism controversy in the schools Monday (see PBS transcript).  Ken Ham and Stephen Meyer presented arguments for criticizing Darwin, while Eugenie Scott and others defended exclusive evolutionary teaching.  The Discovery Institute blog Evolution News analyzed the 14:32 minute segment, complaining that 90 minutes of Meyer’s interview received only 30 […]
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Intelligent Design

Visual Aid: Chance or Design?
March 1, 2005
A TV commercial for the Honda Accord has been circulating around the net as a popular download (see Steel City’s Finest).  It shows the parts of a car, without human intervention, interacting in strange ways like a Rube Goldberg device, resulting in a finished car rolling off the ramp.  Garrison Keillor adds the punch line, […]
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Media

Media and Journals Conflict Over Mars Life
January 5, 2005
Timed for the one-year anniversary of the Mars Exploration Rovers, PBS aired a NOVA program last night about Spirit and Opportunity, and the teams that landed them and operated them on Mars.  As is common for popular programs about Mars exploration, NOVA suggested that evidence for past water found (especially by Opportunity at Meridiani Planum) […]
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Amazing Facts

Engineers Envy Diatoms’ Glass-Sculpturing Prowess
July 21, 2004
What is it?  An ornate crown?  A crystal serving dish cover?  A work of art?  The photo on the cover of the July 17 Science News, labeled “silicon jewels,” is a microphotograph of a diatom, a one-celled organism that lives in the sea and builds itself a glass house too small to see with the […]
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Amazing Facts

Spiderman No Match for Real Spider
June 24, 2004
National Geographic News took the occasion of the upcoming Spiderman sequel to investigate the superpowers of real spiders.  If you were spidy, you could: Jump 50 times your body length.  That would be like a man jumping 300 feet (the world record is 29 feet, 4.5 inches). Walk upside down on smooth surfaces, with 170 […]
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Bible and Theology

Movie  Jesus: Fact or Fiction?
June 2, 2004
At a large rally at Biola University June 1, the Jesus Film Project, in collaboration with the university, announced a new DVD entitled Jesus: Fact or Fiction?.  Each household at the rally received a free copy.  Half of the DVD contains the full length Jesus film, a project that has been translated into more languages […]
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Politics and Ethics

Eugenics Documentary Opens at Holocaust Museum
April 22, 2004
Michael Ollove at the Baltimore Sun reports on a new exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Museum entitled Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race.  The exhibit shows a 1937 Nazi propaganda film that invokes the law of natural selection as support for weeding out the unfit.  Ollove writes, The narrator declares that “we humans have sinned […]
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Cosmology

Privileged Planet Website Opens
March 16, 2004
A website featuring a new book by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards, The Privileged Planet, has opened.  The subtitle of the book is How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery.  The authors take issue with pessimistic views, such as those of Steven Weinberg and Carl Sagan, that our planet is “pointless” or […]
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